angel heart

Angel Heart
They're going to make Hojo Tsukasa's Angel Heart into a TV series. And it's the same seiyu (Ryo) from City Hunter. I didn't watch City Hunter anime but the manga itself is a masterpiece. I wonder how it'll turn out this time and not sure which studio is doing it. Wonder why they wouldn't make Family Compo into anime. It's much more interesting than Angel Heart in my personal opinion. Maybe the popularity carried forward from City Hunter auges well for Angel Heart while Family Compo on the other hand is much less well-known and its transvestite & ambiguous sexuality contents may easily offend the audience. Whatever, GO!! HOJO!

Here's the news link to the official Hojo Tsukasa webpage


But I seriously think Tsukasa Sensei is getting older. The age ridden sentimentality typical of someone going through mid-age crisis(he isn't married?)is clearly manifested in Angel Heart. Action no longer takes central stage. Various roles lamenting about the pasts and their desires to build families, have kids and settle down are just so atypical in his previous works. It's a 'mature' manga no doubt, a manga that started off with a female assasin, who was later tamed and turned into a docile daughter. Well, Tsukasa-sensei, you should start a family soon. It's not late at all.

A Review on 'Angel Heart' @EX

Hojo Tsukasa Official Website

I visited the BBS on the official website and amazingly(or maybe not so amazingly) there're posts in English and Francais. Thanks to my 3-week French crash course. I can actually understand what they wrote! ^^ Je adore Hojo Tsukasa.

howl's moving castle news

News Updates
A press release from Disney confirms that director Hayao Miyazaki and producer Toshio Suzuki will attend the June 6 screening in New York. Other expected to attend include Lauren Bacall, Blythe Danner, Jean Simmons, Emily Mortimer, and Gloria Steinem.
source: Nausicaa

haha, guess Miyazaki will take the usual Japanese airline to the States this time. Wondering about the reasons behind his insistence with Japanese airlines.

The official Disney Website for Howl's Moving Castle is up & running. The English voice cast seem to be doing a pretty good job. I like Howl's English voice better than Kitamura's. It's deepr & more mature. In the trailer, they pronounced ghibli as jee-bli while it should be gib-li, a secret code used by the Italian airforce in WWII, meaning 'hot wind over the desert'. And there seems to be a change in original script. When Sophie shouts to Howl from the trapped cave, she says 'Find me in the future!'. But I remember the original script doesn't mention anything about the future O_o maybe I'm wrong.

Now I think about it, there IS one scene in howl's moving castle I find particularly moving. It's the picture of Sophie walking into a 'dream' of howl's chilhood. The young wizard is standing beneath a briliant star-lit night sky. The background music is by Joe Hisaishi, a track titled 'star boy'. The fallen stars slash through the velvet sky, glide on the shimmering lake and quickly die off as the last golden sparks sither & disappear. The boy who pities the beautiful stars, stretch out his hands to catch them before they plunge to their death. I feel the tiny little hope slowly gathering heat & starting to burn, on something as fragile as a boy's fingertip, stretched out far into darkness & slowly, light.

loveless

LOVELESS

Links
Loveless Official Website (Japanese only)

Yun Kouga's(the mangaka) Homepage (in Japanese)

A Loveless Website Search Guide (Japanese only)

General Info @Animenewsnetwork

Fate - A Loveless Fan Site (in both English & Japanese) - includes gallery, wallpaper & a whole lot of links

Loveless Fanlisting

Soubi Fanlisting

Start to watch 'Loveless'. In fact I watched episode #4 long time ago but it was so not my style I deleted it then. Just when did the old spark come back?? Well, the characters are pretty cute with cat ears & tails. All furry & puppy. Besides that, I have to say the story is a bit on the dark side. The relationships remind me very much of Tetsu & Hiro in 'Rika the breeder'. It wasn't sexually explicit in any sense but the old elements just seem to make a comeback. S&M, that fuzzy brotherly love left unexplained, and the unknown side of Seimei. And yes, Soubi. I can roughly equate soubi with rika, seimei with tetsu & rika with hiro.

Soubi
The character design for soubi, again, reminds me of jin in samurai champloo. Tall & lanky, sharp-chinned , with long hair and most importantly glasses! Which make a guy look 10x more deadly composed & mature. Soubi is a definitely a masochist who doesn't shy saying 'I love you' 1000 times as long as Ritsuka bothers to hear it. To be governed & fated to his master is his only & one wish. To be possessed, I think, is a proof of the value for existence for some people. In the last episode I watched)#8 trustless), Soubi disobeys Ritsuka again and during the fight, he is suddenly hit by a strong feeling of emptiness, or the feeling that his existence is no long meaningful without Ritsuka's commands. He fights alone, for no one. I was for that moment feeling sad for him. But at the same time, he appears stubborn & childish. He wants Ritsuka's love so much that he acts against his own desires. Why doesn't he just call Ritsuka. One more thing, Soubi's realtionship with the principle of that warcraft training school is another question mark. My guess is, they're another SxM pair.

Ritsuka & Seimei
Kawaii ne! A very popular kid it seems. Everybody around him, except his mother who's a bit psychotic to say the least, adores him. Soubi, his sensi, seimei & schoolmates. He's scarily moody at times. & I'm not sure how much weight this kid gives to seimei & to soubi. Sighs, again, it's just like Hiro, stuck between Rika & Tetsu. Although so far the Seimei is only introduced in flashbacks and in manga vol5, some descriptions were given from Ritsuka's standpoint and it's obvious their brotherly relationship is suspiciously questionable. And the seimei Ritsuka knows is different from what's remembered by the rest of the organisation. So what exactly is Seimei like? A mysterious character.

Well, I wonder who Ritsuka's true master is and if it's to be revealed (sure it will, what a cliff hanger & dead knot in the plot) in later publications, will it damage the relationship b/w Soubi & Ritsuka? And seems Seimei is one of the '7 moon' & he's killed by his own kind for an unforgivable crime he committed. What is this crime exactly?? The more I look at the whole thing, the more it reminds me of Rika the breeder in which Tetsu the older brother's raped by his own kind and later committed suicide. But it's also possible that Seimei isn't dead yet coz the body's burnt beyond recognition. chances he's still alive ~10%

This's not the usual type of anime I adore. But I had fun watching it. maybe coz of the amount of 'angst' in it? The art is above average.

So far 11 episodes aired in Japan. Wondering why there're only 8 out on BT. Problems with getting the raws?
oops, just chedk animenewsnetwork, episode 8 was aired on 25th May, so the translation teams on hot on heels. 3 more episodes scheduled for airing in June. Guess there'll be a break after episode 11?

champloo on adult swim

First screening of properly voice-dubbed samuri champloo will be on Adult Swim on May 14th. And I followed the link to Behind the Scenes of the english voice acting job. And... you know, it's just too hard for someone from another cultural background to get the essence of it all. The voice actor for Jin went over the line 'I don't wanna kill you' several times but even the finalised version sounds funny to me. The original voice for Jin is icy cool and dead composed. A expressionless voice that reminds you of a frozen sea. Of course sea won't freeze but the immensity of space hidden behind the unquivering quality of that voice is totally unique to Jin. And it's deadly if you ever raise the pitch half note too high!!
'I don't wanna kill you. You're not worth killing. You're just gonna dirty my sword.'
'I(flat) don't(down) wanna kill you(up). You(flat)'re(down) not worth killing(up)...'
Geeze, how can he say that line so lyrically. It spoils the character. Thankfully they did something with the pace so the final version was slowed down a great deal and sounded more serious, more like Jin, not some fool-around pinhead who brandishes his sword for fun.

And look at this deadly hilarious cosplay of samurai champloo!!! What happened to that boisterous Fuu? They made a yin yang guy out of her!

I'm quite certain they didnt mean to be truthful to original characters in the first place, purely for fun.

Origiinal character design for comparison:


And another much more professional cosplay group